Andrea Palini (Skydive Dubai) has had a fantastic start to the Tour of Hainan. After winning stage one, he was again the fastest in the bunch sprint on stage 2.

“Yesterday I mentioned that luck had been on my side but today it’s a well deserved win”, the Italian commented. “I’ve beaten the world’s strongest sprinter at the moment. I know him very well as I’ve always worked for him last year. I savor the second victory even more than the first one because of how it went. We’ve demonstrated that our team isn’t only about Palini and [Francisco] Mancebo. We’ve kept the race under control and we’ll repeat that as long as I’ll be wearing the yellow jersey.”

“Stages like those first two are accessible to me, I’ve showed it before even though not everyone recognizes that. But when we’ll hit the climbs, it’s a question mark for me since the last race with hills that I’ve done was about six months ago. I’ll have to improvise, hoping that I’ll be at the same level as the best climbers in this race.”